In many companies but also in authorities, today in connection with the performance of services, the establishment and performance of business relations or the performance of State tasks, huge quantities of data occur. A structured and systematic technical definition, production, processing, administration and presentation of the services performed, relationships concluded or similar are required. Only in this way can the backgrounds and details of the procedures connected with the data be reviewed at any time.
One example of a service provider are banks. In banking in recent years or even decades, there has been increasing differentiation of services and prices offered. Formerly uniform services (current account, deposit etc.) with few variants have been replaced by an ever increasing number of different services and price alternatives. The range of financial instruments offered becomes ever wider and the individual financing instruments are more customer-orientated and complex.
At the same time, the customer/partners on one side and the internal auditors and official authorities (supervisory authorities etc.) on the other, impose ever higher demands on the service provider in relation to transparency, consistency and completeness of data/information provided to the customer/partner by the service provider and which are produced and archived in connection with the business relationship.
When for example in a bank a ‘product’ is sold to a customer/partner, a contract is concluded. The contract establishes the agreements between bank and customer/partner, i.e. which rights and obligations are incumbent firstly on the bank and secondly on the customer/partner. As well as basic information, above all the individual features of the product are included.
One problem with the production, processing and administration of structured data sets, such as for example those which form contracts between bank customers and a bank, lies in that the bank firstly needs as many similarly structured products in its range as possible but secondly wants/needs to meet customer/partner wishes. More and more, the circumstance must be taken into account that customer advisors are not always informed of all possibilities and also restrictions which could be important in connection with a product. In addition, the bank's professional check of ‘individually’ agreed contracts can be extremely costly.
A second problem is that with conventional definition, production, processing and administration of products/contracts/services, the data maintenance cost incurred rises substantially as the individual agreements are difficult to store in comprehensible but simultaneously compact form.
Furthermore the typifying of products/contracts/services and their processing in conventional procedures is very difficult, which is reflected in rising data traffic and increased susceptibility to error with associated extra costs.
Finally the development of new products takes a relatively long time in conventional procedures. This is due in particular to rising standards of compliance with legal requirements, and the increased cost of implementation and testing in the complex IT environment of such service providers today, for example the bank or other organisation.
WO 03/042861 A2-D1 discloses a method and a device for computer-implemented production and administration of contracts. In particular a method and a device are known for computer-implemented administration of financing processes and in particular for production and administration of contracts in connection with financial services.
This publication describes the computer-supported production and administration of contracts between a supplier and a customer. The contracts comprise key data in a contract object product and one or more contract modules. To structure a contract, a selection is made of key data and contract modules, and the contract is produced on the basis of the selection made by generation and storage of so-called pointers to the selected key data and contract modules. First a selection of key data is made and then a selection of contract modules. On the basis of these selected key data, which contain information and rules on the product which is the object of the contract, the reliability of the selection of individual contract modules is checked.
This publication arose from the early evaluation phase of collaboration of the applicant of this document with international banks, including the applicant of the present invention. Consequently the information in this publication on how technical implementation could take place is vague and unspecified. The document explains namely at one point only that a selection of key data and a selection of contract modules is made, and that on the basis of the selection made the contract is generated by production and storage of so-called pointers to the selected key data and contract modules.
Document EP 1 286 283 A2 describes interface modules for performance of document-based electronic business processes on a transaction basis and a system for performance of electronic business processes on a transaction basis. Thus the performance of document-based electronic transactions between heterogenic systems is facilitated. An interface module comprises a module for display and monitoring of the useful data flow. This display and monitoring take place on a document basis. The transfer of the displayed useful data to and from a terminal can take place manually or automatically. The document templates can be entered into or modified in the file system of the interface module from a master server in the data network. On a change in configuration of interface module, parameters of processes concerned of work flows formed by means of document templates can be adapted automatically. The document templates and/or a complete workflow can be coupled by means of a mapping unit into a database with predetermined destinations in the data network.
The disclosed systems and methods provide a way of allowing, for a multiplicity of different types of products of a service provider for example a bank or other organisation, a structured and systematic definition, production, processing and administration of structured data sets such as those which describe the services and ‘products’ of a bank, at the level of electronic data.